My Brother

Chandra gave a nod of relief. “It is settled then. You will stay here.”

“No.” The red lips were smiling at me above the rose. “I’m going. Chandra, I’m going tonight. I won’t let those bastards win. If they get away with this, Ameera suffered and Chatterji died for nothing.”

He was staring at me, wide-eyed. “But Ameera—” he began, then paused. “You are right. Revenge is a universal emotion. It should be ours.”

He was heading for the door. “Be ready quickly. Let me take care of Ameera, and do not worry about this house. If there is a charter jet of any kind at the airport tonight, you have my word that it will be yours.”

- 15 -

Calcutta had been easy: all the time in the world to wander the city while I waited for some kind of subliminal clue from Leo to lead me to his contacts. But in Riyadh I would have only a few hours before Scouse and his bullyboys came after me.

Right.

Calcutta had been, at least to my knowledge, quite safe. But Riyadh would hold a crew of known killers, waiting for the next chance to slice fillets from my delicate flesh.

No denying it.

I had a personal friend in Calcutta , a man who was willing to drop his work at a moment’s notice and come to help me. In Riyadh I had no close friend.

Absolutely true.

Beyond question, Chandra was perfectly logical. He had made all these, and a thousand other arguments, in the hours before I flew out of Calcutta . And yet, despite everything, I was right. On to the Arabian Peninsula and Riyadh , as soon as the plane could take me, and never mind every argument that a subtle, devious, and devoted Indian mind could conjure to hold me in Calcutta . That was the way to go.

I was right, and Chandra was wrong.

He didn’t have all the feelings that lay behind the cold facts.

I spoke maybe a hundred words of Arabic, picked up in travels from Morocco to Iraq , but I felt at home in Riyadh . The city fitted my i

That bizarre first exposure led to a genuine love for the city and its hospitable Najdi population. Over the past eighteen years I had taken engagements there whenever they were offered to me. Apart from anything else it allowed me to follow the fantastic change from desert to garden as ten billion gallons per day of fresh water gushed in from Dammam on the Persian Gulf .

Not only that, Riyadh had the best zoo in the whole world. The new Tokyo Zoo was the only competitor, but Tokyo didn’t have those hushed deserts to the north and west, less than a day’s drive away, where I could struggle mentally with tough nuts like the Hammerklavier, and decide how I was going to play them that night.

So here I was, maybe half a day ahead of the killer pack. But how was I going to take the next step? Scouse and Xantippe must have some idea where Leo had been heading, but I didn’t. Yet I had to get the Belur Package — and keep them from getting it while I stayed in one piece.

A nice problem.

My chartered plane had arrived at the airport north of the city at midnight . I hired a car, parked it at the exit to the rental area, wandered back into the arrival area, and settled down to wait. Each time that any plane with a stop in Calcutta came in to land, I went over to watch the passengers arrive in the lounge. And every couple of hours I risked leaving my inconspicuous post for ten minutes, to wolf down a sandwich or go to the bathroom. Naps were taken when I knew there was no flight due in the next hour.

Dawn at last. The passengers who straggled off in the chill morning light were paste-white and red-eyed, shuffling zombies sifting the piles of luggage for missing bags. In half an hour the last of them was leaving. An age until midday . Then I stretched, yawned, and dozed through a long afternoon. The glow of a fine evening streamed in through the high lounge windows, and finally the hush of desert night, lulling the activity in the airport. I had to prop my eyes open, and the lure of a hotel bed grew stronger and stronger. I went to the rest room, washed and shaved, and came back to my seat. Midnight again; cramps in my legs and back; imagined insults and bloodcurdling oaths from Sir Westcott about the way I was abusing my body. Worse aches as the second night wore on.

If my analysis of the situation were wrong, I was in for an uncomfortable couple of weeks.

Anywhere else but in an airport I would have been conspicuous, but here I was surrounded by dozens of weary passengers waiting for their flight, the one that had been delayed in London, Rome, Athens, Bombay, Moscow, Baghdad, Jakarta, or Sydney.

There was plenty of time for thinking, about Leo, Nymphs, and Ameera. I did a negligible amount of it. Other factors were taking over. The latest signs of sensory distortion had begun in Calcutta , when I was overtired after the drive from Cuttack . Now they came sweeping back, con brio, during the long hours of solitary waiting.

The towers of the flash distillation plants that took piped seawater from the Persian Gulf and turned it to drinking water and valuable solid minerals lay ten miles east of the airport. By day they had appeared to me like new temples to Allah, dazzling white spires and metal skeleton mosques rearing their heads four hundred feet above the desert while the watchful German engineers sat in the control rooms at their summit, infidel muezzin flooding the plain below with water instead of the call to prayer. Now, as midnight approached, the warning navigation lights on each tower glowed in the night, red eyes in the desert. They crept steadily closer until they peered in at me from outside the glass windows of the lounge, glowing tigers ten times my height. I was a homunculus in the dust beneath their paws as they pressed against the fragile panes.

I forced myself to look away, to concentrate on my hands in front of my face. This was what Sir Westcott had warned about back in Reading . I struggled to recall his fat, scowling jowls and brusque orders.

If you feel like you’re getting smaller and smaller, cram a couple of these pills down as fast as you can… get to a hospital…

Inside my head, the nerve cells were sprouting their long, threadlike axons, reaching out to couple and reco

I heaved myself to my feet and picked up the little bag of necessities I had brought with me from Calcutta . If I drove carefully it was less than half an hour in the rented car to Riyadh ’s Yaghut Hospital . I had been there six years ago for a gamma globulin shot, when the hepatitis epidemic was ru

Before I had taken two steps, there was a shimmer of green lights behind me. The big screen that provided arrivals information in Arabic and English was flickering again. Terminating passengers from the Manila-London flight were now clearing Immigration; intermediate stop: Calcutta .